Britain Folding Up the U.S. Umbrella

For six minutes the 1,712 delegates to the annual Labor Party conference in the seaside resort of Blackpool stood and roared an ovation for the man they believe has rescued them from political extinction. From Labor’s perspective, the tribute was richly deserved. Neil Kinnock, 44, the copper-haired Welshman with a silver tongue, inherited a divided and demoralized party three years ago. Militant leftists threatened his leadership, and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives, fresh from a landslide election victory, held a commanding lead in opinion polls. Kinnock has changed all that. At Blackpool he gave a masterly demonstration of his authority over a party that for the first time in seven years sniffs victory in the general elections, which must be held by June 1988. Indeed, if the ballot were today, according to recent opinion polls, Labor would have an edge of between 2 and 6 percentage points over the Tories.

Much of Kinnock’s success has come despite a bold — and, for Britain, potentially dangerous — policy on national defense. Labor delegates last week overwhelmingly reaffirmed the party’s commitment to abandon Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent and close down all six U.S. nuclear bases in the country. That antinuclear posture has helped Kinnock unite his party, but he is gambling that it will not alienate mainstream voters and cost Labor the election, as it was largely responsible for doing in 1983. If a Labor government under Kinnock carries out that policy, the blow to the alliance would be greater than French President Charles de Gaulle’s decision in 1966 to leave NATO’s military organization.

In Washington, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and Assistant Secretary Richard Perle, among others, did not try to hide their concern. Appearing on British television, Perle charged that Labor’s policies threatened NATO’s ability to do the task for which it was created, namely “protecting the peace and stability of Europe.” Weinberger, interviewed on the BBC, warned that Labor was gambling “with people’s liberty and freedoms, the independence of Britain and the future of Europe.” The dismantling of Britain’s deterrent and the removal of U.S. nuclear weapons, said Weinberger, amounted to an “invitation to attack.”

Pentagon officials privately fear that a Labor government with a policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament could encourage the return to power of West Germany’s left-of-center Social Democrats and give a boost to the antinuclear movement throughout northern Europe.

Labor’s shadow Foreign Secretary Denis Healey accused the U.S. of “bullying Britain.” Kinnock replied to Washington’s warnings with similar bluntness. He served notice that a Labor government would withdraw from the protection of the U.S. nuclear umbrella after closing down American nuclear bases in Britain. In a BBC interview he said, “If we’re not prepared to use the weapons systems ourselves, we certainly would not be asking anyone else to jeopardize themselves by the use of that nuclear weapon. It would be immoral to do so.”

Kinnock also claimed the Perle and Weinberger blasts did not have the backing of the White House. But U.S. Ambassador to Britain Charles Price, who attended the Blackpool conference, instantly replied that the two Pentagon officials indeed spoke for the Reagan Administration. Price said U.S. views should be made known so that Labor’s defense policy “can be put on the table for examination when the British people come to vote.”